Artful Jaunts

03/25/2025

Katherine Bradford (b. 1942), our next feature and a beloved artist in our clients’ collections, is an American figural painter whose use of color and line destabilizes the relationship between figure and ground. Often, the foreground appears as if tilted towards the viewer, and bodies seem to exist beyond the grips of gravity. In both “Fog by the Pool” and “House Fly Over,” adopts these familiar pictorial techniques and applies them to one of her preferred subjects: the swimmer. Bradford has an uncanny ability to evoke profound existentialism with the quaintest of subject matter, and these two paintings are a perfect example of this unexpected combination. In “Lap Blue Red,” Bradford presents a simple yet tender moment between a woman and child, both of whom hover atop a bright red band of color.

Bradford lives and works in New York City and Maine. She has been active in both locations, drawing inspiration from the coastal environment of Maine and the dynamic art scene of New York. She has been exhibited widely, and in 2017–2018, she was Senior Critic on the faculty of the Yale School of Art. Bradford recently created five permanent large-scale mosaic murals for the MTA’s First Avenue L Station in New York City.

1. Katherine Bradford in her studio. Photographed by Erin Little. .
2. Fog by the Pool, 2024, 20 × 16 in. Private Collection.
3. Bradford’s studio in Brooklyn. Photographed by Rosie Osborne in 2020.
4. House Fly Over, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 30 × 40 in. Private Collection.
5. Bradford in 1985.
6. Lap Blue Red, 2021, Acrylic on Canvas, 40 x 30 inches. Private Collection.

03/17/2025

feature: Harmony Hammond. We are also excited to announce an early fall Jaunt to Santa Fe, NM which will include a private visit to Hammond’s studio. Tap the link in our bio to learn more about this five day trip and how you can join us in the “land of enchantment.”

(b.1944) is an artist, educator, writer, and independent curator. After attending the University of Minnesota, she moved to New York in 1969, where she became a leading figure in the development of the feminist art movement in New York in the early 1970s. Hammond was a co-founder of A.I.R., the first women’s cooperative art gallery in New York (1972) and Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art & Politics (1976). Hammond’s earliest feminist work combined gender politics with post-minimal concerns of materials and process, frequently occupying a space between painting and sculpture.

She has worked with found and repurposed materials and objects such as rags, straw, latex rubber, hair, linoleum, roofing tin, and burnt wood as well as buckets, gutters and water troughs as a means of introducing content to the world of abstraction. Hammond’s near-monochrome paintings of the last two decades participate in the narrative of modernist abstraction at the same time they insist on an oppositional discourse of feminist and q***r content.

Since 1984, Hammond has lived and worked in New Mexico. She currently has an exhibition on view entitled FRINGE, which highlights a selection of her work from the last 10 years. Hammond is represented by .

1. Hammond in her studio during a recent studio visit
2. Studio photo: Clayton Porter, 2019. Southwest Contemporary
3. “Silencia,” Harmony Hammond, 2016. Oil and mixed media on canvas. 80 1/4 x 50 1/2 inches. Private Collection.
4. Installation view of “Silencia”
5-7. Hammond’s studio
8 & 9. Images from Hammond’s show

03/14/2025

The next artist in our series is Catherine Opie (b. 1961). was born in Sandusky, Ohio and is perhaps best known for portraits of the q***r community in Los Angeles, where Opie lives and works. Her untitled series of waterscapes emblematizes another aspect of her photographic oeuvre: tranquil, carefully composed landscapes. The photographs have a visual effect similar to that of a color field painting, where broad swaths of pigment participate in an abstract composition. Often in her work, optical effects like cropping and blurring transform a specific landscape into an anonymous one–a place for viewers to insert their own memories and experiences of the natural world.

Opie is committed to a photographic practice that facilitates exploration and contemplation, rather than communicating a singular message. Bridging the gap between her portraits and landscapes are series that explore the relationship between identity and place.

Opie has been the Endowed Chair of the Department of Art at UCLA, where she has been a Professor of Photography since 2001. She is represented by and and has been exhibited both domestically and abroad.

1. Catherine Opie. Portrait by Jamie Hawkesworth.
2. Untitled #9 (From Your Shore to My Shore), 2009, Pigment print. Framed: 44 x 33 1/4 x 2 in. Private Collection
3. Untitled #7 (From Your Shore to My Shore), 2009, Pigment print. 43 x 32 1/4 in. Private Collection
4. Installation view of Untitled #7
5. Untitled #10 (From Your Shore to My Shore), 2009, Pigment print. Framed: 44 1/4 x 33 1/2 x 2 in. Private Collection.
6-8. Artful Jaunts studio visit with Opie in Los Angeles.

03/11/2025

Jennie C. Jones is the next artist from our advisory clients’ collections that we would like to highlight for Women’s History Month.

Jones (b. 1968) was born in Cincinnati, OH and lives and works in Hudson, NY. Her interdisciplinary practice seeks to engage viewers visually and aurally. Drawing on painting, sculpture, sound, and installation, she invokes the principles of minimalism and abstraction, as well as Jazz and Black history. “Earth Tone, Red Break” is an example of her ongoing series, “Acoustic Paintings”, in which the artist applies acrylic onto acoustic panels, often in a characteristically minimalist palette of neutrals. The pieces juxtapose the noise-absorbing panels with solid and two-tone planes of color, recalling the imagery of musical notation, like bars, crescendos, and measures. Jones encourages viewers to anticipate sound in the most static of environments: “I always say they’re active even when there’s no sound in the room; they are affecting the subtlest of sounds in the space—dampening and absorbing even the human voice.” 

In 2024, Jones was selected as the final recipient of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Roof Garden Commission, producing her first multi-work outdoor sculptural installation for the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden (forthcoming in 2025).

1. Jones in front of Red Tone #1 (Clipped), 2021. To the left, a work in progress and her art supplies.
2. “Earth Tone, Red Break”, 2024, Signed and dated on verso, Acrylic and acoustic panel on canvas, 48 x 36 in. Private Collection.
3. Installation shot of “Earth Tone, Red Break”.
4. “Small, Soft Break”, 2022, Acrylic, acoustic panel, and architectural felt on canvas
48 1/4 x 48 x 3 1/2 in. Private Collection.
5. Jennie C. Jones, 2015. Photo: Jason Frank Rothenberg

03/07/2025

For Women’s History Month, we will be highlighting some of the amazing female artists in our advisory clients’ collections, starting with .

Mimi Lauter (b.1982) is a Californian artist known for her vibrant and mysterious abstract works. Over the course of her career, she has remained loyal to her preferred format and material, large-scale oil pastel on paper that linger at the boundary of abstract and representational. Her art is as dreamlike and meditative as it is physical. The result of rubbing, scraping, and layering transforms the materiality of the surface and oftentimes, dwarfs its spectators. She draws inspiration from mythology, literature, politics, and personal memory as well as the physical act of working in her garden, which she describes as an ever-changing “epic mural” that parallels her creative process.

1. Photo by Katie Shapiro. Courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood DM.
2. Sefira, 2024, oil pastel and soft pastel on paper, 10 x 14 in. Private Collection.
3. Untitled, 2022, oil pastel and soft pastel on paper, 65 3/4 x 80 in. Private Collection.
4-6. Photos from a private studio visit with Mimi in Los Angeles in January 2025.

02/07/2025

We are grateful to every museum, artist, arts organization, curator, gallery, and collector that made this focused trip for the , , and so meaningful and memorable.

Los Angeles has been one of Artful’s most visited cities over the last five years, and we were grateful to be in the city learning and engaging with very prescient themes in art, science, and the environment in the wake of the fires.

01/27/2025

Monaco and Nice with art museum for the International Circus Festival of Monte-Carlo. 🎪

The trip included two nights of amazing circus performances, guided history tours of Monaco and Nice, a visit to a very special private circus collection, stops at the Marc Chagall Museum and Rothschild Villa in Nice, amazing dining experiences, and much more.

01/11/2025

Artful Jaunts has watched with the rest of the world the heartbreaking scenes caused by the fires in the Los Angeles region over the last week. We pray for all of those in this community. We are also inspired by those who have led to support those impacted. The LA Art World Fire Relief fundraiser is one of these impactful organizations led by , , , Olivia Gauthier and Ariel Pittman. Our founders, Tobias and Kristin Welo, have donated to this fundraiser and encourage everyone who is able to consider how they can help this critically vulnerable art community. We pray for everyone to stay safe and remember we will rebuild together.

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12/18/2024

Happy 25th Anniversary to .mcenery.gallery! Here are some favorites from their group anniversary exhibition “All Bangers, All The Time”, on view through January 25th across all four of the gallery’s 22nd and 21st street locations in New York.

06/19/2024

Do you like a great entrance? A gorgeous large Marina Adams canvas greets guests as they enter the foyer and gaze up this beautiful staircase and custom woodwork. It’s stunning brushwork, vivid color combinations, and geometric shapes complement and transform the space.

05/24/2024

Rob Pruitt, Dawn over New York Harbor, 2024 is glowing above this client’s living area. Every detail of these 31 canvases and painted frames is stunning.

Big thank you to Big Sky Art Operations whose team carefully executed this install to its precise measurements.

05/16/2024

05/02/2024

thank you !

04/28/2024

This client enjoys the incredible site line down the hall to Cathy Opie’s From Your Shore to My Shore which captures a Sunset somewhere between Korea and Los Angeles on her ten day journey. It is so easy to escape into this photograph either in the sky or the ocean separated by the dramatic sunset.

04/21/2024

Part of Pedro Reyes “social sculpture” and his efforts as part of “Artists Against the Bomb”. Ahimsa means respect for all livings things and avoidance of violence towards others. A great example where the beauty is equally strong both externally and internally.

04/11/2024

As spring slowly unfolds, I think about this recent installation of a vibrant work by Steve Locke, and how well its color will match the Azalea, the official drink of the Masters golf tournament, to be poured from this bar over Master’s weekend.

04/02/2024

In honor of and her newly opened show, Bark, at Stephen Friedman in New York we share, Box of Rain 13, a mesmerizing piece installed in a master bedroom. The work’s royal blue, including a row of heart-filled love, is interrupted by intermittent blocks of teal and covered by a subtle white drizzle.

02/08/2024

An amazing start to exploring the art and cultural wonders of Mexico City. Thank you to all the artists and galleries who are making this a special week.